Thai Trips

So I've already posted about all our main vacations, but we did travel to a couple other places just on random day or weekend trips too. We spent a weekend in Phitsanulok at the end of May. The coordinator at the ILP school there had an aunt or something who owned a hotel, so we stayed there on a Saturday night...which meant we didn't have to wake up before 6am to be at church by 10! We had figured we'd go to a movie on Saturday, but we really weren't sure where anything was. We got off the train and were trying to figure out which mall we should go when some guy who spoke English and could tell we had no idea where we should go helped us out. We ended up going to Central Plaza, which was exactly where we meant to go. It's a pretty nice mall...we felt like we were in America actually. We eventually figured out that the only movie being played with English subtitles was some Thai movie about the king...which we did not care to see at all. It kinda confused us why they would have English subtitles on that movie and not the new X-Men movie. We wandered around the mall for a while, participated in a squat contest at some fake Apple store, drooled over all the imported food at a grocery store, and tasted all the samples at the booths on the first floor, because (we thought) that nobody knew the address of the hotel we were staying in. I had tried calling the other group and hadn't been able to get ahold of anyone. It wasn't until hours later that Megan realized we were just waiting around to find out where we were staying and so she told us she knew the name of the hotel. A quick Google search later and we were on our way. We went over to Big C that night, ate supper, then had plans to meet up with the Phitsanulok group and go to the night market, but it started raining, and were told that the night market closes when it rains, so instead we just went back to our hotel.

These drawings made me laugh

In June we took a Saturday and headed for Sukhothai. We had to take a train to Phitsanulok, then a bus to Sukhothai, and it took a lot longer to get there than the area book had said, but the bus dropped us off right at the historical city. Sukhothai had been the capital of Thailand waaay back, and now it's all just ruins of old temples and stuff. We rented some bikes from across the street and biked around the park for the rest of the day. Once we were done we dropped our bikes back off and ate supper nearby. We convinced a tuktuk driver to take us to the bus station for cheap instead of waiting for the city bus, bought our tickets back to Phitsanulok, and barely made it from the bus station to the train station in time for the last train home to Phichit.

I don't remember what we were laughing about, but Megan always made me laugh.

A few weeks later we had a trip to Nakhon Sawan. We never would've known about this place or gone there had it not been for our friend Sab. We met Sab and his mom on our train ride into Phitsanulok the Saturday we went to Sukhothai. He's an English teacher and had given us his phone number and said he'd like to take us to Nakhon Sawan, a nearby province, for a hike. The "hike" was a walk up a paved road, but the view was pretty good from the top. 

On the way down Sab asked some man with a pickup to give us a ride down, so he did, and actually drove us all the way to Pizza Hut for us, so that was great. We had some pizza, and then Sab and his mom took us for some street food too. We got noodles with fish balls, pork, and chicken all in it. I thought it was pretty good. 

An old student of Sab’s mom ended up being there too, and actually paid for our food too. The kindness we receive sometimes from random people always astounds me. So Sab and his mom are English teachers, and a lot of fun...spending the day with them felt like we had coordinators, cuz our coordinators are always too busy to do anything with us or show us around anywhere, so it was kinda nice to hang out with Thai people who can do things like order street food for us, because we literally don't know any Thai. We had had one Thai lesson by this point actually, and learned the numbers, but I had taught them to myself during our vacation down south that first week actually, so I only know the numbers, Hello, Thank you, Nice to meet you, and How much? Anyways, we went to a mall after lunch and got some Dairy Queen and just wandered around the mall a bit, then went caught our train home.

We spent another weekend in Phitsanulok in August. We went to a different hotel this time because it had a pool and a breakfast buffet. We went to the Central Plaza mall and watched Guardians of the Galaxy. A lot of the time it was only us white people laughing during the movie...I think a lot of things are lost in translation though. We layed out by the pool a lot and ate pizza, so it was a good weekend. Plus I got to ride a motor taxi for the first time of the semester. I really missed riding them all the time like we did in China. I literally only took one photo the entire weekend...we were relaxing too much I guess.

Our last weekend in Thailand we had a few students who took us to Phetchabun. It was a perfect weekend, and a great way to end the semester. Many, Sydney, and Meme’s parents picked us up Saturday morning and we drove to the place we were staying, some sort of condo rental kind of unit. Us teachers had our own two rooms, so we settled in and hung out for a little while there, had some hot chocolate, because it was probably a chilly 25C or so, and had lunch.

 After lunch we all piled in to the cars again and went to Wat Pha Sorn Kaew, a gorgeous temple. It is covered in mosaic tiles and pottery, and is very colourful. It was probably my favourite temple that I went to all semester…absolutely beautiful, and less weird than the White Temple, plus it's not touristy at all because there's no way to get to it using public transportation.

That night we had supper and then did some karaoke too, because we were with Asians, and they love that stuff, haha. The girls woke us up the next morning early to see the view. We packed up our stuff, then went to a waterfall, a beautiful coffee shop, and finally to a river place with some sort of resort beside it or something and swam in their swimming pool before finally heading home.

Yes, that sign says "Caution: Elephant Crossing"

We also spent another couple of days in Bangkok at the end of the semester before flying home. We didn’t really do much, we hung out at our hostel “Refill! Now”. I didn’t really get that name. We went back to Terminal 21, tried on clothes at H&M, and wandered around the area of our hostel too, one night walking forever trying to find…something, honestly, I don’t remember what it was, but we were following a map, so I know we were actually trying to go somewhere…we ended up at McDonald’s though. It was in kind of a cute area though, and there were soccer fields right beside it with people playing, and artwork on the walls around.

We left super super early the next day to the airport, danced it out to Taylor Swift outside the other girls’ gate, and then said our goodbyes. L

Chiang Mai, Round 2 - Not Nearly Exciting As Round 1

We got to our hostel, the Baan Khun Hostel that night (we liked this place a lot better than our previous hostel in Chiang Mai), checked in, and then Lindsie, Megan, and Abby booked to go bungee jumping the next day. Me, Karly, and Rachel had no desire to go bungee jumping, so we decided to go to a Thai cooking class and make some food while they were gone. I made pad thai, yellow curry, sweet and sour vegetables, and the most delicious mango sticky rice I've ever had...literally, it was the best. We did some vegetable carving as well, and all of ours paled in comparison to our instructor’s carved carrot. 

My carving is the one on top...obviously.

We had supper at the Salsa Kitchen again that night, because it’s delicious, and finally got to meet Tanner, Lindsey’s husband, who had finally finalized the sale of their house and had flown to Thailand while we were in Cambodia, we also brought our new friend Anjali who we met on our flight to Chiang Mai. We headed over to the Night Bazaar afterwards and did some more shopping as well. The next day we had a tour booked to see the White Temple in Chiang Rai, the Golden Triangle, and the Karen Long Neck Village. Our first stop was actually some hot spring…the highest one in Thailand, or something like that. We weren't there for long, but we soaked our feet a bit.

 The White Temple was interesting for sure. It’s an absolutely gorgeous building. The detail is amazing, but…the place is weird. The idea is that you pass through “hell” before going over the bridge and into “heaven” or something, and let me tell you…hell is creepy. Also, inside the temple, on the wall with the doors closest to “hell” the wall is painted with things like Superman, Batman, Terminator, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Harry Potter, and a minion from Despicable Me, and lots more weird things. They don’t allow pictures to be taken inside or else I would for sure have taken some. There was also a monk praying inside…and I had to stare at it for a while before concluding that it was actually made out of wax. So yah…strange, but really really pretty. The building that the bathrooms were in was also gorgeous. It was like a gold version of the temple almost. 

Our next stop was the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, and Laos all meet. So with our tour, we had been given the option to take a boat ride to Laos for an extra like $10, but we had heard that it's basically just a stop at a casino there. We didn't feel the need, and wanted to save money, so while the rest of the group headed off on a boat, we explored the area a bit. Their boat tour ended up being a lot longer than we had been told, so we ended up waiting for about an hour and a half. It wasn't the most exciting place either. There was a Buddha, and a Golden Triangle monument thing, but not much else.

 Lunch wasn't bad, but nothing exceptional. And then the Long Neck village was kind of strange. It’s basically a few souvenir shops. The little girls were cute, but honestly the whole tour that day was kind of a let-down.

 We were happy to get back to Chiang Mai. We met up with Lindsey and Tanner for supper again, this time to a little Italian restaurant. It was delicious. By this time we were all pretty tired of the food at the school. I mean, I expected there to be lots of rice. There was lots of rice in China, and so I was used to being fed lots of rice. But it seemed like the cooks fed us the same thing every single day, because I’m pretty sure they use the same seasonings for everything. So it didn't matter if it was chicken or pork, or green beans, or cauliflower or peas…it all tasted the same. It gets tiring after 3 months. So it was always nice while on vacation to eat something that not only wasn't rice, but didn't taste like the same thing I’d eaten yesterday and the day before and the day before… We also had planned on going out and doing a bit more shopping that night, but it started pouring rain on our way there and so we decided to just call it a night instead.

This is us with our favourite hostel worker, Mon, on our last night in Chiang Mai after walking in the rain and getting soaked.

 We left the next morning, had McDonald’s for breakfast as our last taste of western food, then got on our bus home.